Appearances and Deceit

Appearances can be deceiving. For instance a handsome hunk can be a jerk. Or a chunky nerd can have the heart of a knight. Too often we don't really look past the outward appearance to really see what's underneath. One of the nicest men I've met in my life was a school teacher that taught building and construction. He was uglier than sin on the outside. But on the inside he was pure gold.

A reader once wrote to me to tell me that she liked my secondary characters because they were "real". Had to think about that for a while. I think she might have been talking about this appearance thing. Books can't be filled with only beautiful people without setting the teeth on edge. It's kind of like having too much sugar in the fudge. It just makes your teeth ache.

It's best to temper that with what I call medium...medium coloring, medium weight, medium height...medium. So your secondary character Joe is not too tall, not too short, not skinny, not fat, with brownish hair and eyes. That's pretty much most of the people around us. There are other variations out there.

The neatest trick is to then let that individual be your villain. They're perfect. No one will suspect them. That's the beauty of appearance. If you are skillful enough at camouflage to be invisible, then the deceit is complete. And shocking. After all, isn't that what the neighbors always say about the killers? He was so ordinary.

Anny

Odd Blog Topics

I asked my fellow authors for blog topics thinking I might get something unusual and different. And I did.

1)Blue lint in male belly buttons.

2)How long is a piece of string?

3)Why do we put throw rugs on top of carpets?

4)Why a kangaroo cannot walk backwards?

5)Knitting with dental floss

6)Why is there no rhyme for orange?

7)Different varieties of Potato Salad

8)Bad jokes

Hmmm. Well, I have no idea why men collect blue lint in their belly buttons. Maybe because they wear jeans? Maybe because the jeans turn the lint on their shirts blue? Anyone want to pitch in here and help?

How long is a piece of string? About that long. Of course, it's shorter if you fold it in half or tie a knot in it. But otherwise, it's about that long. Unless you stretch it. Then it's longer.

Now, the rugs...well to keep the carpets clean, of course. I live in an apartment with very, very light colored carpet. When I move out, if it's not clean, I will have to pay them big bucks. So I covered the entire place with area rugs. We've been here five years and the carpet looks pretty good.

Kangaroos... this suggestion came from Amarinda, of course. Who else? This is obviously a trick question but I gave it my best shot. I googled it. I read a lot of weird forums that discussed the fact that the kangaroo cannot walk backwards, but nobody knew why! So? Does anybody have the answer? Cindy, you zoologist you. Speak up!

Knitting with dental floss. Seems like it might be a bit labor intensive, but the end product is probably lacy and delicate. Personally, I would think that crocheting would work better but no doubt there is someone out there would will actually try this. Please get in touch with me and let me know how it works out.

Why is there no rhyme for orange? Because no one made one up! So in order to solve that problem we could just whip up a few. florange = orange flower, glorange = the color of the sunset, thorange = how your butt feels after you wear a thong all day, storange = where you store the kids Christmas presents, warrange = designated battlefield. There now. That wasn't that difficult, right?

Different varieties of potato salad. What varieties? There is no other potato salad except the kind my mother makes. The rest of them are not potato salad. They're wannabe potato salads, but the real true blue deal is my mother's potato salad. Got that? Right.

Bad jokes. I'm kinda of funny about jokes. A bad joke to me is a joke that makes fun of someone because of their religion, color, ethnicity, size, sexual orientation or a disability. Those aren't funny. In general, I can deal with jokes that play off the differences between men and women as long as they aren't mean. But there are a lot of funny situations in this world we live in. Enough of them that we don't need to lower ourselves to hurting those around us. I know this paragraph isn't funny...but neither are the jokes that make fun of people who are different from us.

I love humor and having fun unless it hurts someone's feelings. And you can never tell what thing you say might inadvertantly hurt the person next to you. Generally, on a person to person basis, people are people just like you and me. They may eat different foods or worship differently but ultimately, when they're cut, they bleed the same color blood as we do.

I hope you enjoyed the unusual blog topics. Tomorrow we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming. Blessings on your day.

Anny

Now pop over to Kelly's blog where she has the saga and a brief dissertataion about Auntie Jack, an Australian icon at http://www.kkirch.blogspot.com/ and then stop by Amarinda's blog where she gives us another slice of life in OZ at http://www.amarindajones.blogspot.com/